Flooring materials used for buildings, such as houses, apartments, offices, and stores, generally include petroleum resins such as polyvinyl chloride (PVC).
Flooring materials containing PVC are manufactured by extrusion or calendering of PVC resins. However, since PVC resins are derived from petroleum, a difficulty may occur in terms of supply of raw materials in the future due to the exhaustion of petroleum resources.
Further, PVC flooring materials generate a large amount of toxic substances in use or when discarded and thus need to be used less in view of environmental considerations.
Recently, green flooring materials based on environmentally friendly resins have received attention.
However, typical green flooring materials have low strength and are not suited to molding or processing. Moreover, such materials are likely to form a gap due to heat in use.